Big bucks tax plans gaining ground

February 24, 2012

Strong statewide support exists for imposition of a so-called “millionaires’ tax” as California residents indicate fatigue with budget austerity. [SanFranciscoChronicle]

A recently released Field Poll shows that sentiment is growing for a higher tax rate for high income earners.

Several groups are circulating initiative proposals to accomplish this result; one of those, sponsored by Gov. Jerry Brown, showed majority support in the poll. Brown’s plan would raise about $35 million during the five years of its life, administration officials say, and earned a 58 percent approval rate, according to the Field Poll.

Each of the plans being championed would require only a majority vote to take effect. Brown’s bill would specifically benefit state schools.

Another similar measure by the California Federation of Teachers, California Nurses, and others, got 63 percent approval from those polled.

47 Comments

1/2 PERCENT SALES TAX!!! HELLOOOOO- is anyone home?
You all are blathering on about the ‘rich’ but ignoring the poor. This increase is on everyone and I am sick of having to fill California’s bloated red hole with tax increases. Sacramento is a money pit that can never be filled. Stop the digging.

Right on! Sales taxes are felt more sharply by the poor and middle class as it is a more significant portion of their income. Increasing sales tax is a bad move to start with and worse because it’s trying to be disguised as being a tax on the rich. What a tax like this means is that I try even harder to buy out of state to avoid paying this tax. If sales tax was 5%, I’d make sure that I bought everything in state. A very dishonest tax increase.

In other words you don’t deny federal taxes as a share of GDP were at the lowest since Korean war?

Or that the richest among US have tripled/quadrupled their historic share of income (according to the ANTI Tax Foundation)? While their percentage of income has drastically been reduced the past 30 years (CBO)?

Or if the bottom 50% of US had kept the same share of the pie they had in 1980 the bottom 50% of US who averaged $15,300 in 2010 would have $5,000 more in income? MORE than enough to contribute to that piece of the pie which is at post WW2 lows of only 41% of federal revenues, income taxes ?

Speaking of Federal taxes, here is a little tidbit I found on Yahoo News reporting on who pays for the cost of Obama’s campaign travel.

“The cost of operating Air Force One is $179,750 per hour, according to the U.S. Air Force. White House Pool reports show that the plane flew for nearly 12 hours for that trip, which means the plane ride alone cost more than $2 million. That doesn’t even include the cost of flying advance workers and specialty vehicles ahead of time to the president’s destination, not to mention the cost of setting up security.”

Okay. Now, here is the punch: “The campaign does not reimburse the government for the cost of flying Air Force One, but for the equivalent cost of flying the president and his staff first class on a commercial airline.”

It’s pretty rediculous how much money is spent during campaigns and it just gets worse and worse with each election. The money that is spent is obscene and that goes for both sides, it’s how our system operates. This is a sad reflection of our society, it’s always about the money. I can’t believe that after all these years that I’ve never read about how other countries handle this. I wonder if they spend money on campaigns and are bought and paid for by big corps like our politicians are, I’ll have to check that out later.

It’s worse than that. There are 2 AF-1’s and a C-130 Hercules used for international travel. The back-up Pres. plane is parked at an alternate airport within a short Marine-1 hop. The Hercules carries pres. armored limo’s, the helo and whatever else. Sooo, when the Royal Obama couple wanted to see the ‘Festival of Lights’ in India during one of their (is it 13?) vacations or hopped over to Norway for his so-deserved Nobel, well, you do the arithmetic.